I started with a sheer curtain panel of curtains I am not using anymore. :) I had visions of Carol Burnett playing Scarlett OHara on her show wearing that curtain rod dress.

I stamped the damask background using my StazOn ink and heat dried it right away. The curtain is made from a nylon so I was very careful to keep my heat gun farther away to prevent melting. I did have some melting when I embossed. I stamped the entire piece with versamark and heat embossed using some iridescent clear embossing powder to give it the glimmer.

The butterfly was created usign the same material only I embossed the outline with a pearlescent blue embossing powder. Then I sprayed purple and blue glimmer mist over the image and let it dry. I than covered the entire image with versamark and embossed using clear iridescent embossing powder.

I used the leftovers from my border punch to accent the corners of my damask background.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

I had an email request to share how to make the border on the circle on this card:

I am going to share with pictures. Sorry... Video would have required one of the kids helping out and I was able to take a few pictures.

Step 1: Cut out a circle. I cut out a 6 " circle for my example shown below. I also removed the guide on the corner punch. this allows you the ability to punch along the edge of a card or a circle.Step 2: Line up the edge of the cardstock against the "V" intneded for the corner of your paper to fit into it. Make sure that both sides of your cardstock are pushed up against the "V" to ensure you are straight. Step 3: Squeeze the handle to punch. This punch tends to pull when you squeeze the handle so make sure to keep the paper against the metal edges flat when squeezing. Your first punch should look like below:

Step 4: After you have your first doily on the edge you are going to put the punch back on the edge of the circle and you want to line up the left side of the punch to slightly overlap with the previous punch. Hopefully you can see a little bit of metal peeking through in the bottom part of my punch. Once again keep the cardstock edges pushed up against the metal "V" on the bottom of the punch an keep it in that position when squeezing the punch.

Step 5: Your circle edge should now look like this:

Continue on until you get to the last one. It may not line up 100% and you may overlap a little but just center it between the edges and punch your last one. I promise you know one will notice you have one not in center. :) Or cover it with a flower like I did on my card.

I hope that helps! Next time I will try to get one of the kids to help with a video.

I made 3 cards using Kristina's 50th color challenge http://www.kwernerdesign.com/blog/?p=1333 and can only submit one link so I decided on this one: The colors were brown, red, yellow, turqouise, and white... Here is the card I am linking to her challenge.

The vines are stamped with yellow first and overlaid with a brown to give a shadow effect.I cut several of the vines and used them for the stems of the flowers.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

We have had a really busy weekend... Track meet, soccer game, baseball practice, SRE and birthday parties. (One of which was hosted at our house for family for our 2 oldest) You name it we have done it... I only had time to work on one card which was supposed to be for Kwerner's color challenge, but I think the colors might be a little off so I might play with the colors again. The colors for the challenge were red, brown, yellow, turquoise, and white.

This stamp is from Rubber Stampede. I forgot I even had it and was digging out a stamp to send off and found it and thought "Oh I have to play with this again".

The shapes are from the nestabilities and I actually stamped the image twice to be able to get 3 shapes cut out.

Products:

Rubber Stampede - Wild Rose Background

Nestabilities

Versafine - Vintage Sepia

Watercolor Pencils

Stampabilities - Happy Birthday 01

B Line - Lace Background

Ranger Distress Inks - Broken China

Thanks as always for stopping by... I appreciate all your comments and visits!

Friday, April 24, 2009

I am working on an Alcohol Ink class for my LSS. This is one of the ideas I had that I thought would be fun. Create polka dots with my Alcohol inks. I was so excited when I found out that the colors from the Adirondack Bright Ink pads were going to be released from Ranger. I used them in this card. I really love bright colors and this card has a lot of umph!

I just realized this was my second polka dot card... Must mean there is a third one that I need to create.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Distressed Polka dots... That seems like that couldn't happen right? Polka dots are so cheery and wouldn't ever be distressed. :)

I was playing along with the HA Blog weekly challenge of distressing and I have this pretty paper pack from Making memories with all reds and pinks. I took a scrap from that and stamped the flowers. The cardbase is stamped using a polka dot stamp that I love too!

Products:

Hero Arts - Two Flourish Flower

Savvy Stamps - Distressed Dot BG

Amuse - Happy Birthday MG

Memento - Rich Cocoa, Lady Bug (Love the name and so appropriate for this card.)

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Caardvarks challenge this week is tree's a crowd http://caardvarks.blogspot.com/2009/04/trees-crowd.html and the Hero Arts weekly challenge is distressing... Neither of these are something I can resist. I love my trees and I also have a little attraction to butterflies.. I decided to create a butterfly tree.

If you have ever been to a butterfly garden you probably have seen something similar to this..

I used the Marvy Uchida butterfly punch. They are so adorable.. Tiny butterflies and I used up scraps! Yeah! I had some acohol inked background (red) and glimmer mist background (yellow) which I punched the butterflies from. Before I punched the butterflies I stamped in red pigment ink a script stamp on the paper.

The rest is easy as pie... Stamp the tree add a little sponging and you have a beautiful background tree for the butterflies to float softly on.

I love getting mail, especially if it is not bills! I recieved this in my mailbox yesterday...

with a very nice thank you written in it from Jacqueline! Love her cards and was so lucky to recieve one in the mail! Thank you Jacqueline!

I also had a chance to keep playing with using bleach to stamp on a glimmer mist background. Here is the results:

I wish I could take a better picture but alas... All rain yesterday and today... I have created a light box based on something shared on the Hero Arts Flickr Group but need the light source to finish it. I will get there... :)

Products:

Penny Black - Casual, Curlicue

Glimmer Mists (I made this awhile ago and not sure which colors I used. Sorry)

Vellum

Adirondack Brights - Orange

Versafine - Onyx Black

Versamark Watermark Ink

Clear Embossing Powder

Stampabilities - Matthew 7:7: 02

Hero Arts - Script

Spellbinders - Shapeabilities - Butterflies 2

Thanks for stopping by... I hope the spring flowers are blooming by you!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Over at 2 Peas Kristina Werner is hosting monthly card challenges. This month's challenge is Mother Day cards or Spring Cards. She provided a grid card as one of her samples. Here is my take on her grid card...

These beautiful patterned papers were all shared with me from my friend Jacqueline. http://myscrapbasket.blogspot.com/ Jacqueline also makes beautiful grid cards and is a great inspiration for this.

My squares are all 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" and I used Hero Arts stamps to stamp on top of the PP.

I wasn't too pleased with the results but I liked the frame that was left from cutting the typed paper and decided to create this...

Of course it wasn't the original frame from the die cut as I ripped that. :)

Products:

Hero Arts - Sparkle Clear - Arigato

Hero Arts - Decorative Bamboo

Ranger Distress Inks - Vintage Paper, Shabby Shutter, Broken China

Versafine - Vintage Sepia, Deep Lagoon

Hero Arts - Watercolor Coneflower

Hero Arts - Alphabet

Spellbinders Nestabilities

I also wanted to share some fun news... I just recieved my Stampington postscript and in there they link to the future releases of Take Ten / Stamper's Sampler. I always like to peek to see what is coming out in the next magazines. I was pleasantly surprised to see my Masterboard I had submitted is going to be in the June magazine! Here is the link to the sneek peak. http://stampington.com/html/postscript_04142009_tss_take_ten_summer09.html (Scroll all the way down)

I have been dying to play with my grungeboard paper and decided to create some flowers. Here is a close up of the flower:

The flowers were created by using the scallop punches and punching out grungeboard paper.

After the circles were punched spray Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist on the grungeboard. Both sides took some of the glitter but only one side took the color (Non-textured side). Take an Adirondack Dye Ink pad and smear directly on the scallop. Stamp the birthday DesignBlock from Hero Arts using an Orange StazOn ink.

After that was all done and dry, cut slits around the scallops towards the center.

Fold the flower in half and put a glue dot in the fold. Fold the flower again in half and put another glue dot in the middle. Roll edges of flower outword by rolling on petals with pencil to curve.

The butterfly is also made from grungeboard. The image is stamped using StazOn ink and colored over with a permanent marker to get a darker effect. The inside of the butterfly is colored using alcohol markers (Copic). I only have a few colors to I didn't have the opportunity to do too much shading on the butterfly.

I wanted to share 2 other things as I was thinking about the great customer service and I think companies should be recognized when they give such great service.

I had heard about a recall on my 3M ATG Tape runner. I called 3M customer service and they made it super easy to replace my tape runner and sent me additional rolls of tape!

I had a problem with my express shape cutter from Fiskars and I sent them a few email describing the problem and within a few days I had a replacement one along with new blades!

Love when companies do business like that! It made it so easy for me and these are both heavy duty items for me. I use them alot! So I am tremendously pleased that they backed up their warranties with such great service.

I have a vintage farmhouse clear stamps from Fiskars. I love the background stamp. (Bottom Half of the card) and it has a rooster. I decided to put this card together using this set. Don't know who would like to recieve a rooster on their card but I thought it was too cute!

Friday, April 3, 2009

After I made the gold embossed anniversary card, I decided to continue on with that theme and came up with this...

The card is not actually mounted on the purple background. I took my picture with the purple background. This is another one layer card from a paper perspective. The butterflies were masked on the paper before I stamped the design block.

I added smaller flourishes on the butterflies which are difficult to see because of the purple dye ink.

I think the tag might break the single layer rule. But I wanted to have a little pop of color on the ribbon.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Yeah! I was selected for an Honorable Mention in last weeks challenge for window cards! It is always an honor to be selected as there are so many fantastic artists submitting to each challenge.

Here is another one layer card for the Hero Arts Challenge... It is really fun to sit and think about how to recreate a design with masking instead of paper layers. Althought I really do miss the actual physical layers you would find on the card from a texture perspective.

I used a circle and scalloped circle punch to mask for the effect seen above. I also cut along the edges of the scallop using an exacto knife to pull the ribbon under.

The bottom border is a stamp from hero arts which I cut around and I sponged on the inside with a brown ink to match the flowers.

Products:

Hero Arts - Clear Design - Scallop Borders

Cornish Heritage Farms - Grid Paper

Kaisers - Pearls

Adirondack Lights - Lemonade

Versafine - Vintage Sepia

Ranger Distress Inks - Shabby Shutters

Memento - Rich Cocoa, Rose Bud

Hero Arts - Petite Birthday

Hero Arts - Card Art - Thinking of You

Hero Arts - Screen Shadow

Blue Moon Charms

Ribbon Unknown

Thanks for stopping by... Oh and that snow almost all melted away.. Just the piles from the snow plow are left. Spring is coming.. Yeah! We can see the tulip leaves peaking out of the ground determined to come even after sitting under another 7 inches of snow for a few days!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

We are invited to a 50th wedding anniversary... They are my MIL's cousin and his wife. I am so happy that we can go and celebrate this with them and their family. I find one of the hardest things with getting older is losing our loved ones. I am happy that they have 50 wonderful years together and are going strong.

I asked for some ideas, suggestions and inspirations over at the Flickr group and got some wonderful ideas which inspired me to create this card:

Products:

Hero Arts Design Block - Wavy Leaf Pattern

Verses - Love Bears All

Ranger Embossing Powder - Queens Bee

Ribbon, Flowers - Unknown

DCWV - Patterned Paper. (I have had this forever and multiple sheets, not sure why I purchased them but it looks lovely behind the vellum)